
Mark Pilgrim, a high-profile blogger and life-long Mac user who recently caused a few ripples by
switching to Ubuntu Linux, has written a nice
list of essential software for Linux. Since he's coming from the land of iTunes, iPhoto, and Mail.app, the list is skewed toward Linux apps that replace (or at least approximate) their OS X counterparts. Pilgrim's picks include
digiKam for photo management,
amaroK for music, and
KMyMoney ("like Quicken without the monopolistic dickwads"). However, there's a few apps he hasn't found an equivalent for, namely iMovie and Quicksilver ("Damn. I miss Quicksilver."). Head over to
Dive Into Mark for the complete list.
In other news another notable Mac user, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, is also
about to make the Mac-to-Linux switch. I'm with
Jason Kottke, who says, "If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this."
Tags: essential, linux, list, mac, Mark Pligrim, MarkPligrim, opensource, osx, switch, ubuntu
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsAlex EzellJun 29th 2006 6:40PM
Bah, it's just a couple of nerds who want to try something new, like we all do. Since when do the fortunes of a company shift on the decisions of two dweebs in black t-shirts? If these Mac nerds had any balls, they would have had a Linux machine sitting in their office for the past few years like the rest of anyone whose job it is to actually develop things than to write about developing them.
CheeseBurgerManJun 29th 2006 8:55PM
He should take a look at Katapult for his Quicksilver replacement. Having never used a Mac, I dunno exactly how it compares, but I certainly love it. :-)
http://wiki.thekatapult.org.uk/Home
dprattJun 30th 2006 2:35PM
I think that they're going to find a much more difficult and frustrating road in front of them. I've been a linux user (and advocate) for over 10 years, but even Ubuntu isn't up there yet. For one thing, on a laptop, power saving modes and suspend-to-ram don't work. Ubuntu does not support WPA out of the box, and to add it is quite difficult.
All my home PCs run Linux, and I have a spare PC laptop that I try and install linux on with every major release of each of the big distributions (fedora, ubuntu, etc). To this date, I have yet to have an install that does all of the 'laptopy' things that you would expect without a bunch of work and a bunch of expert knowledge.
My laptops are all macs, and I don't see that changing any time in the future.
I think after a little bit of time, they're going to miss what the mac has to offer.
Nigel TaoJul 1st 2006 9:09AM
Yes, he misses Quicksilver, but he does mention the GNOME Deskbar in the same breath as QS.
There is a screencast at http://blogs.gnome.org/view/nigeltao/2006/03/13/0 that might be worthy of your front page. :)
Kevin M.Jul 8th 2006 10:51PM
Dpratt what are you talking about? Theres a folder in my filesystem that says "laptop mode". Ubuntu handles my laptop phenominally well. Perhaps the PowerPC version is lacking in this area.